I'm Back

Just thought you should know. I'm back.

Something isn't a hobby unless you can walk away from it whenever you damn-well please. (Although Bob and my mother constantly mentioning my (non-updating) blog every time they talked to me did hasten my return. They represent about half of my regular readers.)

Well, there hasn't been much news lately anyway. Bob had a little stroke and was in the hospital for a couple of days, but he knows that already. I found a new stretch of beach here in Pattaya that is my world's favorite. (Went with Justin, Rat, Pui, and Pot.)

Yes: Notice, we are under trees. Not a drop of sunlight hitting us. The water is only a few yards away. Also, unlike Bang Saray, there is no road here... only beach-front mansions.

The Pattaya Secrets web-board opened up their new bar/hotel, becoming one of the few businesses on earth that was a website before it was a real place. (I expected a standard little hole-in-the-wall operation with some cement tables outside, plastic stools inside, and perhaps a TV playing football matches, a minature snooker table and a rattan magazine stack filled with outdated copies of "Pattaya Today". Instead, what I found was a zillion-baht bar done up as nice as any in Pattaya, with fancy lights, comfy bar stools, flat-screen panel televisions, and all the other trimmings. (Better photos, I'm certain, can be found on their website.)I finally banned cartoons from my house, because Pot is an addict. Yes, of course, I was a bit of a cartoon addict when I was a kid too, but back in my day, we didn't have 24-hour cartoon channels to turn us into zombies at any time of the day... I only had perhaps 2 or 3 hours of afternoon cartoons per day after school, plus 5 or 6 maximum on Saturday mornings. All Pot does is watch old Hanna Barbara re-runs for hours on end. Hell: He doesn't even have the sound turned up... just watches the pictures. (Yes... the cartoons are in Thai.) In fact, I wouldn't even say he watches the cartoons as much as he "basks" in them, absorbs them like vitamin E from a sunbeam.

So I programmed the television to skip the 3 (yes, 3) 24-hour cartoon channels. Now, Pot is literally going through withdrawal symptoms.

Pot also made friends with the look-krueng kids who live in the big house across the street. That was until Pot's mother, Pui, heard how rude they were, when they leveled a stream of swear words and insults at their own mother while Pui was standing right there. Now Pot can't visit with them. Well, they're Dutch. It's probably some hyper-liberal European parenting technique. Heheh.

We finally found a school for Pot as well: The Buripha School about 3 miles away. I originally wanted Pot to go to The Regents School, but $10,000 per year for kindergarten is a little much. Maybe when he is older and I'm paying money for real differences in education I'll send him there. As it is, the way that I look at it, I would be shelling out about $250 per nursery rhyme.

Well, that's a quick update.

Oh... one final thing: Justin also has his own website, Two Stone Traveller. He has photos of our trip to Laos on it, and (although you will have to search your way through about 100 photos) one single photo of yours truly. No: No hints.